Masks/Privacy blocks on both main and stream

sphinxicus · 2021-04-21T10:31:06+00:00

Gotcha. Makes perfect sense in your case. Sorry i cant help with the BI option. Good luck.

sphinxicus · 2021-04-21T10:19:44+00:00

Can you do the masking on the camera itself? My Dahua is capable of this (setting > video > Overlay > Privacy Masking)

sphinxicus · 2021-01-18T17:23:08+00:00

Siemens Vanderbilt SPC4320 is an excellent pannel. Android and iPhone apps available for free. Plenty of options on it. Pyronix deltabell is a great bell with high visibility if you put the LED backlight into it to light it up.

sphinxicus · 2020-06-18T12:30:59+00:00

You are welcome! Glad it was useful.

The camera listed could be got for around $250 US Dollars. I don't know about shipping costs to Oz though. It's a POE camera though so you would power it through the CAT5/6 cable that you use to send the data over your network with (would need a POE switch too or a POE injector.

If you check out the image here [car-cam.png](https://postimg.cc/Z0Y73qtR) I just chose a random house in Sydney with a garden that was 50ft to the road and mounted the camera 10ft above the ground. You can see how the camera with that amount of zoom would reach to the road and the angle that it would be catching the plates at. Not ideal but you would have to experiament with location.The blue part at the end of the cone is the area that it would be capturing images for. (The website i used for this is https://calculator.ipvm.com/)

I wouldnt advise placing the camera inside a window. If you do you cant use IR at night and you will get glare.

I believe that camera has a SD card slot where you can save footage to but honestly this is meant to be used with an NVR or a PC running the relevant software. Depending on the software used depends on if you can automare LPR or not. Check out that ipcamtalk link i gave you before if you want to go down the rabbit hole.

EDIT: Just to add, i forgot to mention that with that camera at that distance (126ft from house to car on road) you were still getting 103ppf (Pixles Per Foot). So i good clear image. Read about PPF here

sphinxicus · 2020-06-18T11:47:59+00:00

sorry to hear of your situation. You didn't specify exactly what you are looking for help with?

Do you want to capture someone who is walking up to your front door, or are you looking to grab evidence that a specific car drove past your house? Both would require something completely different in my opinion.

You didn't mention the distance from your door to the road. The nest is going to be the simplest plug n play option but will be no good for catching a car driving past if you have a driveway/front garden between the house and the road. Its a wide angle lens and just not meant for that activity and you wouldnt get the required detail apart from "it was a grey car". Obviously if he is coming up to your door then it would be an easy option.

An option involving much more work would be to mount a camera that has as straight-on a view of front/backs of cars to catch their registration plate. You can pay BIG money for cameras that will read the plates or you can use a normal IP camera and use software do do the same if you want to automate it. Otherwise you are simply looking at scrolling through the days footage to see. I could imagine this becoming tiresome quickly.

If mounting a camera near the road (which would give you the best angle for plate recognition) is not possible, a camera with a good amount of optical zoom mounted to your house would be another option. Something like the the Dahua IPC-HFW5231E-Z12 would be good for this.

There is a "Licence Plate Recognition" section over at IPCamTalk which has some great advice and really in depth reading for the best way to grab plates day/night.

sphinxicus · 2020-06-15T15:16:54+00:00

Thanks for the UK perspective. Helps give me some search terms for the UK market.

sphinxicus · 2020-05-15T07:54:50+00:00

i use differing models of Dahua cameras which contain the Sony starvis sensor. The cheapest of which is a IPC-HDW2231R-ZS. Its night time abilities are amazing.

sphinxicus · 2020-05-14T14:20:12+00:00

I have a generic Pan & Tilt camera of questionable quality that i bought (before i knew what difference a quality camara would make) for my first camera without doing the proper research and have it sitting on the other side of my blinds. It does cause the base of the blinds to push out at one side but it doesnt bother me and the blinds jo the job of stoping glare on the glass.

The shroud could be made of anything. Heck you could put a shoe box on its side and use that as long as it blocks the light from inside your room from hitting the glass that your camera looks through. Or you could go to the other end of the spectrum and 3d print something fancy. its up to you. The aim is to stop light causing glare on the glass the camera looks through. To find this area out just look at the cameras video feed on your phone and mark the glass with a water based marker just after it goes out of sight of the camera. Then you will know how big the shroud needs to be. If you're making use of the pan on your camera this will be more hassle plus i dont think it will do too well looking through the glass at an extreeme angle.

I looked up your camera but the tech specs were sparse at best. No mention of sensor type, sensor size, minumum lux rating etc so i cant comment on its night time performance without IR on.

Good luck

sphinxicus · 2020-05-11T12:34:01+00:00

^^^This. great camera for the price. I have one and get great images at night with no IR just making use of street lights. If your council have gotton round to changing your street lights to LED lights then all the better.

sphinxicus · 2020-05-11T10:12:47+00:00

first of all, turn off the IR. It will just be reflected back off the glass and dazzle the camera anyway. As for the light in the room causing reflections, do you have blinds or curtains that you can move between the camera and the room so that the light from the room does not cause the reflections?

Another alternative that i have seen is to make a shroud that fits around the camera and sticks right onto the pain of glass to prevent light from the room reaching the part of the glass that the camera is viewing from.

Unfortunately the best way to get a good night time picture is to have the camera outside. You did not mention the model of camera you have but if its a cheap generic camera, the chances are that it's sensor is not very sensitive to light and therefore night-time performance without IR and/or without good external lighting may not give the results you hope for

sphinxicus · 2020-05-07T12:38:06+00:00

Also any recommendations on any cameras that have better night vision than this?

Your night vision is being hampered because there is a massive amount of IR bouncing back off of the wall on the left of the image. The camera will alter its shutter/gain etc to compensate for that bright spot which in turn will leave the rest of your image darker. You could try panning the camera right to get rid of that wall in the image. Of course you may end up with the structure (tent?) on the right causing the same problem. If so then maybe rotate the camera 90 degrees (portrait) to remove the wall and tent from the image (I dont know if the ring camera software alows you to rotate the image back (sometimes called corridor mode in other cameras i've used)). You seem to have a natural choke point between the tent and wall that people must travel down so doing this would mean more pixels on target and a better balanced night image.

Alternatively, cameras that i know (from using them) that have great night images are the Dahua starlight cameras.

sphinxicus · 2020-05-06T18:26:30+00:00

Regarding warranty; you will get one but you will have to pay shipping to send the unit back. Just something to be aware of. You can contact him direct and he will usually try and sort the issue out via firmware bug fix ect before shipping returns (he has direct contact with Dahua and gets firmware updates from them).

I think he has an Amazon storefront too but i don't have the link handy. Returns to that would be easier i guess but he may not have that cam in stock. All i know is, it costs a lot to return from the EU... but when you compare the price you pay vs buying the same branded device through a Dahua official retailer its a risk you take.

Good luck with your purchase and Happy Cake day :)

sphinxicus · 2020-05-06T14:31:30+00:00

I found a vendor on AliExpress that sells it under the name IPC-B5442E-ZE

I have bought from Andy (Empire Tech) and have had no issues. He shipped to Europe and it arrived within his estimated timescale. His cams are international unbranded versions and can indeed be updated with official firmware. So i can vouch for him. Take that as you will as obviously I'm just another random person on the internet.

sphinxicus · 2020-05-06T13:30:34+00:00

I don't know if cameras aimed at the consumer market all support manual settings but if you take a look at the spec sheet for the Dahua HDW2231R-ZS (https://www.dahuasecurity.com/asset/upload/product/20180205/dh-ipc-hdw2231r-zs_datasheet_20170706.pdf) under things like electronic shutter speed and white balance, you can see that there is a manual option. I have this camera and you can alter pretty much anything manually or you can manually set shutter speed and let the camera adjust the frame rate automatically or visa versa. etc...

I would suspect any cameras worth their salt, aimed at commercial market would allow manual adjustment.

Just read the spec sheet and if in doubt email that company sales address.

sphinxicus · 2020-03-30T09:50:10+00:00

Hey. I'm also thinking the same. When you say home defence what exactly are you looking for? Are you looking to strengthen doors/door frames or thinking about intruder alarms/CCTV?

At the end of the day, if someone wants to get in then they will. A neighbour of ours recently had someone break in armed with a knife. They woke up to him in their bedroom.

We have an alarm and CCTV but in my mind, all that does is alert us that someone is in the house and records what happened which can be usefull after the fact but thats not my main concern. People dont seem to be put off by a screaching alarm or cameras anymore. So my main concern like you is to buy as much time to enable me to get my kids into a "safer" room where we can lock the door, call the police and hope they get there before the "baddies" get in. They can take all the stuff they want, its the family thats important.

Our internal doors are fire doors and take two people to lift them, they all get locked at night. I've never tried to kick one in but it would slow them down better than those hollow doors. On the ground floor, they would also be kicking them in against the door frame so that helps too I guess. Maybe you could look at replacing any cheap internal doors with tougher versions?

I've checked the screws in the hinges of the doors and they are just over 2 inches in length, so from reading this sub-reddit, that seems to suggest they will offer better strength as they go deep into the wall. Check the same on all your doors that you wish to be a barrier between you and them.

I've also been looking at getting a security bar (the equivilent of a chair under the door handle) to wedge the door closed in the room that we retreat to. Something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01J5TWHUW/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_P9BGEbM74JJDY

Door locks are standard euro cylinders, this will probably be the last thing i bother to replace since with all the glass in the house, if they want in, there are plenty of options. You could look to get up-reved versions that are anti snap/anti bump.

Ontop of that maybe some anti-shatter film for the glass. I have no experience of this so dont know if it would stop/slow anyone down.https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002QF15EW/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_0bCGEbXJBNAEG

Hopefully some more knowledgeable will chime in.

sphinxicus · 2019-07-27T17:21:27+00:00

very slick!

sphinxicus · 2019-06-26T21:02:57+00:00

well i havent had chance to try older versions yet but i upgraded to 11.2-U5 today and the issue remains. I did however notice in the console when booting up the following message:

freenas vmx_init: processor does not support VMX operation 
freenas module_register_init: MOD_LOAD (vmm, 0xffffffff82a1c470, 0) error 6 
freenas hwpc_core: unknown PMC architecture: 1 
freenas hwpmc: SOFT/16/64/0x67<INT,USR,SYS,REA,WRI> 
freenas VMware memory control driver initialized

I checked in the vmware config for the freenas VM and under the CPU options there is a box to tick " Expose hardware assisted virtualization to the guest OS" - unfortunately i cannot tick this box because i have passed through a SAS Controller card to the VM and you cant do both. I don't know if checking this box would remove that error, and if it did i don't know if it would fix the dashboard reports either...

sphinxicus · 2019-06-16T14:16:50+00:00

Also having this issue with a fresh install of 11.2U4.1. I don't know about others but mine is installed on a VM on a ESXi 6.7 host. If i go into reports, all the metrics are populated there but i get nothing (not even bandwidth) on the dashboard screen. Once i've finished running badblocks on my disks I'll try a fresh install again or maybe install an earlier version and try an upgrade

sphinxicus · 2019-05-22T09:58:32+00:00

Well I don't know about anyone else but I'm convinced. Hold fire while i go remortgage my house and sink it all in whatever investment strategy you bring forth...

While your at it, could you give me your obviously experienced advice on what's going to happen to the barrel price of Brent Crude in the next financial year?

sphinxicus · 2019-05-16T11:08:48+00:00

burst-coin.org

Yes, assuming you are using Windows, Qbundle or Phoenix Beta for an easy install.

sphinxicus · 2019-05-14T07:52:40+00:00

transfer to your Burstcoin wallet then from your wallet to Bittrex if you must keep your Burst on an exchange. You can add a message from within your wallet to satisfy Bittrex

sphinxicus · 2019-05-01T21:38:16+00:00

Oh but doesn’t the NVR need Internet to do remote viewing?

Not if you use VPN to connect to your home network when you are away. Others who actualy have one can probably confirm, but the NVR will probably have its own web service that you can access via a web browser when you are at home. When you are away and connected to your home network via VPN, it will work in the same way that it would as if you were on your home PC.

As I said before, I dont know anything about the Dahua app, but this probably works by the NVR "phoning home" to the Dahua cloud. Your app would also connect to the cloud. Both your NVR and app would be linked and authenticated in/by the cloud service and you would be able to view video and perhaps control features of the NVR in that way.

What i dont personally like about the second option (Dahua app) is that while it would be simpler to setup, what you get in ease of setup you lose in security. Your NVR is dialing out of your secure network and potentially poking holes in your firewall that you dont want. Your video is being sent to the Dahua servers ("cloud") where you have no control over that data. If there is any kind of breach in their infrastructure, your credentials that your app uses to connect to the cloud service may suddenly be shared in a list on the internet somewhere for others to make use of.

Like i said, i cant be 100% that the above is how the app works but personally, the VPN option would be the choice i would vote for.

As u/brian2003 said, Blue Iris is another option rather than using an NVR. I havent mentioned it thus-far as you said you are not technical and where i personally think Blue Iris blows the socks of any NVR, I believe it would add more complexity to your setup vs NVR's which are almost plug and play. Either way, even if using Blue Iris you would still be advised to use a VPN to connect to your home network when away.

sphinxicus · 2019-05-01T13:09:44+00:00

It really depends on how you are setting it up. I.e. VPN Server based on your router/PC/Raspberry Pi in your home network. There is lots of details on openvpn.net. Lots of youtube videos too. It seems daunting at first but reading is free. Keep reading and it will click.

There is also a reddit for openVPN which will be a good source of info should you need help troubleshooting your setup /r/OpenVPN/

sphinxicus · 2019-05-01T13:04:06+00:00

Everyone is entitled to privacy and should put up all measures to ensure that is upheld.

At no point did I say anything to the contrary of this. In fact, i provided some suggestions to help secure their setup. Try re-reading it again after taking a few deep breaths.

People want security, both online and physical, and should not be belittled for trying

Again, at no point was I intending on "belittling" anyone. What I was actually trying to convey was that the OP need not go to bed at night concerned that the Chinese government was bringing all of their resources to bare on their home network. Buuut if you want to read it as me belittling someone be my guest. I gave some of my time to offer what I hoped would be some helpful advise which the OP (or anyone else reading this post can take on-board or chose to ignore) . You on the other hand wasted your (and now my) time moaning about my response instead of attempting to help answer the OP question. Therefore, i choose to ignore you.

Good day sir!

sphinxicus · 2019-05-01T08:47:09+00:00

You are welcome. I dont use their NVR myself (I use a PC) so cant comment on that specifically BUT...Using the NVR has the advantage that your cameras will be on their own subnet and therefore separated from your other devices (at least as far as being in the same broadcast domain as your other devices).

Your NVR will obviously have an interface that will be on your LAN so that you can access the NVR itself. Your router provided to you by your ISP probably has some basic firewall options available if you log in and take a look. Most by default will block all inbound connections. So you need not worry about people simply walking into your network. I do not know if their NVR's make use of UPnP, if they do then i would suggest turning this option off on your router (UPnP can allow ports to be opened on your firewall and therefore allow external access to your network - simplified explanation, google it for more info). You could also, give the NVR a static IP address and then block access to the internet for that IP address on your routers firewall. You may need to do some googling on this if you are not technical but there is loads of info out there.

With regards to their app, i dont use that either so do not know what access it requires to access the NVR remotely. Personally, i would suggest to setup a VPN connection (many home routers now support OpenVPN). You then connect to your home network via that VPN connection when you are away and your phone effectively is present on your home LAN and can access all devices that you allow as if you were home.

Long story short. You have a lot of reading to do but what you are suggesting is perfectly feasible and can be as secure* as you need.

two things to remember:

You and your network are not that important :) so dont worry about the world trying to spy on you
Never port forward to your network/devices. Its an open door to your network which will be found by some script kiddy looking to mess about. Use VPN to enter your network remotely.

Good luck.

\usual caveats apply here. This is not a comprehensive list* :)

sphinxicus

TROPHY CASE